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Saturday, January 3, 2015

3. All-Thing

Virtually every conceivable type of government or non-government can be found in the Autonomist Alliance. Some succeed, many fail, but the grand parade of social theories, experiments and designs always continues. The information and communication technologies of transhumanity make many new forms possible, and many old forms can be improved.

The citizens of the small Bernal sphere named Leer Fluss are governed by the All-Thing.

The All-Thing is a reincarnation of the things of Germanic tradition, a meeting of every citizen to decide all matters of law and policy. It is overseen by Lawspeaker, a purpose built AI with no interests except to ensure smooth procedure and cite relevant precedence. It is always in session.

In order for the All-Thing to always be in session, every citizen provides an alpha-fork of themselves as a representative. The regular forking and merging makes cyberbrains a requirement; forking with biological brains simply takes too long. Citizens merge with their representatives and then re-fork after every decision, ensuring that the forks represent their citizens accurately, and that the citizens have full memory of deliberations and decisions and are kept up-to-date.

As Leer Fluss has slowly grown, the All-Thing has become more and more cumbersome. The simulspace meeting-hall can simply be expanded, but regular procedure has become slow. Some have proposed the creation of smaller Things, each with jurisdiction over its members, with the All-Thing reserved for habitat-wide issues only. Anarchist-leaning citizens, however, object to the creation of a federal hierarchy, and threaten to leave if this is implemented. Some, with gleeful irony, have noted in return that an exodus of anarchists would in fact alleviate the population problems necessitating the new structure. It seems conflict is in Leer Fluss' future.